A multi-national wood manufacturing company that employs 2200 people, and is focused on technology and innovation for the future to grow its specialty business

Summary of Project:

For over 20 years researchers have tried to develop a fire resistant oriented strand board that competes with fire retardant plywood, with no success. Project objectives include making panels with different commercially available formulations and testing them for fire performance, as well as developing a board which is completely new to the Industry, and patentable a different means of achieving fire performance. To date there is no commercial solution that provides an FR OSB product that preserves the original product strength. A ll of them degrade the structural properties making the solutions unviable as alternatives. This project requires us to think outside the box on applicationn technologies, preserving board strength and meeting the fire performanc standards.

Research Objectives/Sub-Objectives:

Understand the fire codes and standards

Employ clever ways of achieving fire peroformance in a cost-effective manner, by using a combination of existing technologies or something completely new. Different loading levels of resin are required in the panel to combat the strength loss and not all FR chemistries lose strength to the same degree

Produce a patentable final solution for commercial production, and test at NRCAN laboratories for large scale fire performance

Interested students need to get the approval from their supervisor and send their CV along with a link to their supervisor’s university webpage by applying through the webform or directly to Noha Gerges.